Lord Orford's Reminiscences Author:Horace Walpole Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 31 Howe, and mother of the present earl. Lady Howe was never publicly acknowledged as the king's daughter ; but princess Amelia treated her daughter Mrs. Howe... more » upon that foot, and one evening when I was present, gave her a ring with a small portrait of George I. with a crown of diamonds. Lady Darlington, whom I saw at my mother's in my infancy, and whom I remember by being terrified at her enormous figure, wag as corpulent and ample as the duchess wag long and emaciated. Two fierce black eyes, large and rolling beneath two lofty arched eye-brows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays — no wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress, and that the mob of London werehighly diverted at the importation of so uncommon a jseraglio! They were food for all the venom of the Jacobites; and indeed nothing could be grosser than the ribaldry that was vomited out in lampoons, libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sovereign and the new court, and chanted even in their hearing about the public streets . Caroline, the eldest of lady Howe's children, had married a gentleman of her own name, John Howe, esq. of Hanslop, in the county of Bucks. On the other hand, it was not till the last year or two of his reign that their foreign sovereign paid the nation the compliment of taking openly an English mistress. That personage was Anne Brett, eldest daughter byher second husband of the repudiated wife of the earl of Macclesfield, the unnatural mother of Savage the poet. Miss Brett was very handsome, but dark enough by her eyes, complexion, and hair, for a Spanish beauty. Abishag was lodged in the palace under the eyes of Bathsheba, who seemed to maintain her p...« less